Student Section
- Thread starter cyups2323
- Start date
The student section sucks nowadays. Can’t even get a let’s go state chant going before tip lol.
When you have 2-3 empty trips between buckets it kills the crowd…. That was my takeaway yesterday.
I sound old, but Id imagine the competition for entertainment for college kids also part of it. Not that anything else was going on yesterday, but scrolling on phones, endless streaming, etc can't be helping. Even the fact that all games are on tv, "back in the day" not all were.
Meaning, the lower sides will always be full due to die hards and even casual students fans, but I'm sure a lot of student ticket holders got up late morning, had lunch, and decided "meh" and did other things.
Might be time to relook at numbers sold, rewards, lottery for them
Meaning, the lower sides will always be full due to die hards and even casual students fans, but I'm sure a lot of student ticket holders got up late morning, had lunch, and decided "meh" and did other things.
Might be time to relook at numbers sold, rewards, lottery for them
Yes, you are absolutely correct.
Kind of the point I am making is that if you own season tickets (which is great), you should have an easy way to make sure people are in your seats if you can't attend. I try to sell mine, then I give them away, but my friend base is not huge and the people I work with apparently have lives and love their kids and their activities more than I did (ha!). I'm pretty sure I could give my tickets away, and would gladly do so, if I knew 10,000 people. I don't, but ISU and their fan base sure do.
The Cyclone Ticket Exchange and CF's board is the beginning of a nice model, but there are improvements to the process that might drive incrementally more money into the pot and fill the coliseum from the bottom up. Killing Ticketmaster at the same time would be a nice added benefit.
1) I propose that we have a system that makes it easy for people to take the next step to get tickets into people's hands that would appreciate them. At Ticketmaster, logically they set the bottom price for a ticket for a consumer at $15. Not because that is what it is worth, or because they care about filling seats and making our home court advantage better. It's because of some base rule and/or it is not worth it to them from a profit perspective. I also know that you can already give tickets away in other methods, but directly connected to that system should be a way to fill the higher-level empty seats with low-cost or free attendance, "sponsored" by those that want people to have a nice experience. Once we get down to $5 per ticket or something, I'd rather sponsor someone and hope that they have a nice experience. Let ISU do that after I press a button that says "give away" if they are going unused. Is it complicated? Yes. But optimizing certain factors of a system often is. Couple this with #2 and #3 below and you may have a system that could work.
2) Figure out an upgrade path for existing season ticket holders who want the option to upgrade to empty individual game seats during the season. Make a kind of ticket that allows you to look around and bid on upgrades and use the "relative value" of your ticket as part of that upgrade cost. Then ISU collects that additional fee and shares some of it with the absent ticket holder. Better than eating the ticket all the way around. This could get quite complex, but I am fairly certain we are smart enough to improve the market on these tickets and provide the exact experience that every fan is looking for. Our marketing department does a very good job, in my opinion, but if you really want to stand out in a crowd, you need to be innovative in your business model value proposition, not just promotion.
3) I get it that students need to have a certain threshold of a game to attend or be interested. They are completely overstimulated and have way too many options for their time nowadays. They can be an asset to Hilton and prove it on occasion. I don't want them to lose their position, but we have to figure out a way to allow eager ISU fans into Hilton that would have an option at those seats a reasonable amount of time before tipoff. We can't have hundreds of seats going completely unused because the Baylor game on a Saturday at 1:00, in unusually nice February weather, is not interesting enough for them. I'm not sure what motivates a present-day college student. In my day, student tickets were hard to get and you coveted the spot. But I am absolutely sure there are ways to get them to cooperate with a system that allows others to use those tickets if they don't intend to.
One possible solution is to create some kind of priority seating system for students based on attendance. In other words, you prove your “fanaticity” (a play on tenacity) by actually showing up. The more games you attend, the more benefits you earn, whether that means earlier entry, better seat selection, or access to prime student seating locations. Other smart schools do this well by putting students in the lowest bowl, along the sideline, and especially in sections that show up well on TV. If those premium student spots were reserved for the students who consistently attend, it would incentivize them to show up (even for games that do not meet their high "requirements" for attendance). It may not guarantee every student is loud, but it would absolutely put more butts in seats and help eliminate the situation where large chunks of the student section sit empty for big games.
Just a note. Some variation on this theme could be used for non-students as well. If your goal is a better environment and real Hilton Magic resurrection, then people might be interested in joining the effort to do it and being a part of the system. Join in to get your seats filled consistently, earn "rewards". If not, you can "pay their way out" of it.
I am sure there are gaps in my thinking here. I would be interested in the systems that others who have issues with empty seats have produced. I'm sure there are better ones than I have not articulated, and I would be interested in discussing them.
Not being able to talk with your neighbor in the balcony.
You are correct, the experience is different in the bowl. That is where the noise concentrates.
But, I guarantee you the noise level is lower on average now than it was 30-40 years ago. The consistent intensity is just not the same.
Only time Mussburger got harder was when he saw AJ McCarron's girlfriend.
Half the crowd raced for the exits with over a minute left in game yesterday. We all need to be better vs KU
Anyone have insight to KU fans ..
Do students not fill up AFH for every game?
Do old folks leave with 2 minutes to go at AFH, in order to beat traffic?
Do students not fill up AFH for every game?
Do old folks leave with 2 minutes to go at AFH, in order to beat traffic?
I posted this January 9th in another thread. In brief, Hilton isn't quite what it was 20 years ago in my opinion. It's still very good, but if you haven't experienced Hilton consistently for 30 years it's hard to notice the change that has happened.
Nah. Not loud enough consistently.
Needs to be more consistently loud; it's not consistently loud enough, and particularly when the Cyclones are on D- not after we score or Jefferson gets his double-double. The fans who don't understand basketball well enough are the ones clapping and cheering after buckets. That's easy; cheering on D is when it matters and disrupting the other team's communication and the refs and making them feel the intensity.
If you think cheering after a double-double makes the Magic, or makes it intimidating and consequential - you're wrong. I remember it louder more consistently when we had more of a "yearning" fan base - even during break games. A fan base that wasn't spoiled by success yet. I remember a fan base in the 90s that hadn't had as much success, and there were other factors then that contributed to a louder environment. There was less manufactured noise from the fake, artificial beats they play now that drown out the band during timeouts or drown out spontaneity. The more authentic, fan-centered participatory, "clap, clap, clap, clap, clap" at the introduction of the opposing teams' players is dead... basically isn't done or discernible anymore. That stuff required fans to be part of the action. What has also happened, there's more donors and an older demographic sitting in the parquet than the 80s and 90s. They're just quieter, older, more reserved, for more of the time. I get why they're there, but it does affect the atmosphere. Also, the students are crammed behind both baskets and there's now "gates" up in front of them and they were moved back from 20 years ago when they were closer to the court and could spill out onto it with jumping around and theatrics. The students lost about two rows of seats when that happened in the past 10 years or so.
There's also no seating behind the coaches and sideline anymore. You have to go way back into the 80s to see that, but that helped make Hilton raucous and louder as well. I recognize that was a VERY long time ago, but those changes matter.
Hilton can still be loud, but those of us who have seen hundreds of games from the '90s, 00s, 10s and now 20s and have been paying attention can tell that it's a little bit more sterile, a little bit less rowdy most of the time now than it's hey day. It can still explode and have very solid games - like the Iowa game earlier this year - where the parquet gets into it more and stands more often, but not as much as it used to. Particularly in games like the West Virginia's of the world.
My point is that fans make a difference, and as someone who has seen the consistent craziness of Cameron Indoor in person, and seen hundreds of games at Hilton over the years, it just is on average consistently quieter now. Not a lot, but a little, and that makes a difference.
Every game I've seen at AFH they fill it up. I don't know it intimately though like Hilton. Just know it from TV. They also seem to bounce around more often and frequently and it's hard to find our fans doing this. Nobody jumps up and down like this at Hilton anymore:
Would love to see this return more to Hilton. This happens consistently at KU conference games I've watched on TV at least.
Again, don't know Allen Fieldhouse intimately like Hilton, but Hilton is not what it once was.
I'm not sure how much things have changed, but wonder how much Cyclone Alley has contributed to it. I was a student from 2002-2006, and continued with season tickets through the 2014-2015 season before I moved down to KC.
I believe Cyclone Alley started in 2004ish? I know for the group of people we had that went to games, we were instantly turned off by it because it took what was a natural home court advantage to trying to manufacture one. I believe the first year of Cyclone Alley it was only one end of the lower bowl, so we stayed on the other end. It eventually went to the entire lower end so those who didn't want to join were pushed to the upper deck. By that time I was graduating and had season tickets in the upper deck, so it was no big deal.
Again, I'm not saying Cyclone Alley is why everything has changed, but I still wonder to this day if having an official club for a student section was ever really necessary.
I believe Cyclone Alley started in 2004ish? I know for the group of people we had that went to games, we were instantly turned off by it because it took what was a natural home court advantage to trying to manufacture one. I believe the first year of Cyclone Alley it was only one end of the lower bowl, so we stayed on the other end. It eventually went to the entire lower end so those who didn't want to join were pushed to the upper deck. By that time I was graduating and had season tickets in the upper deck, so it was no big deal.
Again, I'm not saying Cyclone Alley is why everything has changed, but I still wonder to this day if having an official club for a student section was ever really necessary.
When I was in school when an opponent fouled out the pep band would play Happy Trails. I wish they still did that instead of the left, right, left, right thing.
Cyclone Alley coming on strong at the same time we had bad basketball was not a great combo.
I've always believed that the Hilton crowd was the Magic and it wasn't just about a lesser team beating a better team. It was about all of HIlton understanding when the team was struggling and needed energy and instead of waiting for something to happen, getting on their feet and making something happen. It was about understanding when the visiting team was in danger of falling off the precipice and getting crazy and pushing them off the edge.
I understand media timeouts are a lot longer than they used to be but back in the day, many times when a visiting coach would call a timeout to try to stem the tide and quiet the crowd, the crowd would nearly maintain the energy through the timeout. Today, I don't expect the energy to carry through the whole long timeout, but I do expect the crowd to understand that quieting the crowd is what the visiting coach wants, so when that second end of timeout buzzer sounds, start ramping up the sound and energy back up too where it was before the timeout. Don't give Bill Self, Jerome Tang or Scott Drew what he wanted by calling that timeout.
The student section has been in decline for awhile. I think this year has been much worse than last year though. I'm sorry, but it's true.
This was a good student section. I think people in earlier generations were less self conscious and were there to let loose.
